Top Fuel teammates Morgan Lucas and Shawn Langdon finished the first day of professional qualifying
at the 21st annual O'Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals in the seventh and eighth positions,
respectively, almost assuring themselves of top-half starts when Sunday rolls around.
Lucas put together a steady 3.909 at 301.40 mph in his GEICO Powersports/Lucas Oil dragster, while
Langdon recovered from a Round 1 engine detonation to run a 3.952 at 302.62 mph in his Lucas
Oil/Dixie Choppers dragster in the cooler nighttime session.
"This was the first truly hot racetrack we've had to deal with this year," Lucas said, "which is
exactly what we were expecting. Overall, we're pretty happy with our results. Some of the teams
ahead of us really pushed the limit but we decided early on to get down the track and start
collecting that hot weather data we'll need going forward.
"The GEICO car was great both runs and Shawn's car would have gone down the track both times if not
for a rocker arm breaking in that first session."
Langdon's large fire put the team into overdrive between rounds as they completely swapped out
powerplants in their car. It also made the group extra cautious in the second session.
"We used all the advantages of a two-car team today because after that explosion we had no data,"
said Langdon, a top candidate for rookie of the year. "It was nice for Stewie (crew chief John
Stewart) to be able to look at Morgan's data and tune from there because we knew how important it
was to make a decent pass tonight.
"I guess we could have gotten after it in Round 2 but we didn't want to run the risk of smoking the
tires and not being in the top half. Lane choice here could be huge and if you're not in the top
half, it could really hurt you. I just don't think anyone will be able to run much quicker tomorrow
because both rounds are going to be in full sunshine."
Everyone will have two more attempts to improve their times at noon and 2:30 p.m. Saturday.
